Chuck Larsen

When God created us, male and female, He created us in His own image.  Genesis 1:26 makes this clear: “Then God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” He took dirt and formed our bodies. Now God’s image isn’t to be found in our bodies. Instead it’s to be found in our spirits. Both the Hebrew and Greek words for spirit are also translated as wind or breath.  In Genesis 2:7 we read, “…the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.”

One way to determine if a body still has life is to check to see if the person is breathing.  If you and I can fog a mirror we’re still alive. If we were deprived of air we wouldn’t last very long. Breathing, breath, is a gift from God and a constant reminder of our dependence on Him.  Try holding your breath and you will soon find that air-hunger becomes painful after only a minute or even less. We will die in just a few minutes unless our “breath” supply is restored.  But there is more to real life than this physical existence. God never intended for mankind to die. Death became part of our experience when Adam sinned.  God warned Adam that if they chose to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, death would become part of their experience. They would no longer enjoy the real “life” God had intended. Death would be the shadow that would color all the days of their physical existence. So it is today!

As I’ve wrestled with this passage in Genesis, John 20:21-22 came to mind. It reads, “Jesus said to them again, ‘As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.’ And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.’”  Whereas the breath of life, physical breathing, is something everyone needs to survive, Jesus gives us something that is more than just physical life. He breathes out “holy breath.”  In John 10:10, Jesus said he came, not just to give us life, but to give us life to the fullest extent possible. Jesus was not promising just a better human life. He was offering to give us the very life of God, the eternal, indestructible, incorruptible, divine life. This is the life that is in God Himself.  In John 5:26, we read, “For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself.” It is the kind of life that’s not limited in quality or quantity! It’s the way back into the graces of the God who made us. Jesus offers access to everyone. In John 14:6, He said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

Genesis tells us that the earth was “tohu vabohu.” That’s Hebrew for “Formless and Void.” But then God spoke and brought order out of Chaos.  First, He created the categories by separating one from another. He made divisions between the waters above, the waters below, the sky, the dry ground, the seas, and the land.  Even though there were distinctions between space, time, and matter, the distinctions needed content. They were empty. They were void of anything meaningful. So God filled each with content. He put planets and stars in space along with the sun and moon.  He put birds in the sky, fish in the sea, and plants and animals on the dry ground.  He did this so that each life form in each arena would reproduce itself with the intent of filling the whole earth. In Genesis 1:11, God said,  “Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, on the earth.” And it was so.

This creative process of God, His Word, brought meaning to space. It brought meaning to the skies; it brought meaning to the seas; it brought meaning to dry ground. Further, God created man to manage it all and to recognize and understand the purpose of life. Indeed the voids were all filled. Man had dominion over it all. But man’s meaning was not found in the fullness of the earth! Man’s purpose was found in the fullness of His communion with the God who created it all. He shared the joys of life with the God who made Him. Male and Female, God created them to have an intimate relationship with Him. When man broke that communion through sin, life’s meaning, purpose, and significance was lost. Chaos reigned again in creation, and man was lost and alone. But He was left with a promise that one day the seed of the woman would come forth and bring meaning back to life.

Then God sent Jesus!  He fills the voids once again and gives meaning and purpose to our lives once more by receiving the judgment for our rebellion on the cross. He restores our intimate connection with God, and things matter once again.  God’s Word can once again fill the voids of lives.  Look at all these verses. John 2:1-12 – Jesus fills our empty lives with joy…Luke 5:1-11 Jesus fills our empty nets…John 4:7-42 – Jesus fills our life with living water… John 6:1-14 – Jesus fills our hungry souls…John 6:35 Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.”

The Old Testament begins with the assertion, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” The first three words in most English translations are “In the beginning.” These three words represent one word from the Hebrew text, Bereshit! The Books of the Law; Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy are all named according to the first words in their text. Thus, Genesis in a Hebrew text is named “In the Beginning.” Exodus is named “These are the names.” Exodus begins with a list of the names of the Israelites who left Canaan to join Joseph in Egypt. Leviticus is “And God called.” God called Moses to hear the laws he was to pass on to Israel. Numbers is called “the Lord Spoke” referring to God’s words to Moses to count the Israelites. Deuteronomy in the Hebrew bible is “These are the Words” referring to the beginning of the recitation of the commandments God gave Moses to pass on to Israel.

There is much discussion on the phrase which translates one Hebrew word, “In the Beginning.” But a strong consensus among biblical scholars is that it is referring to a time (if you will) before time. The ticking of the clock had not yet begun. Nothing existed at all. E did not equal MC squared. The concepts we gleaned through studying the way things are did not exist yet. There was no such thing as science of any kind; no math, no physics, no chemistry, no biology and no discipline of any kind. “In the Beginning” refers to a time before anything that we know or can understand existed. I named this section, “God started the ball rolling” but that’s not right. God existed before there was a ball to roll. The phrase “in the beginning” is simply intended to put God at the head of absolutely everything. Without God there is no ball, there is no science, there is no life.

Now let me move on to the first words in the Gospel of John where the eternal story of Jesus is told. It begins, “In the beginning” was the Word. The word was with God and the word was God.” Then John clarifies for us what he means by “Logos,” the Word. “The Word became flesh and lived among us.” There is universal agreement that this is referring to Jesus. John writes, “All things were made by him, and nothing was made without him. In him there was life, and that life was the light of all people. The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overpowered it.”^[1] John makes it clear that the very first phrase in the Bible is about Jesus!

^[1] The Everyday Bible: New Century Version (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, Inc., 2005), Jn 1:3–5.

Joseph had experienced much pain in his life at the hands of other people: Abused by his family, unjustly convicted of rape and imprisoned, and forgotten by fair-weather friends. You’d think he’d become one of the most callous men in the bible; resolving never to let anyone get to him again. That’s the natural reaction to unjust suffering at the hands of others. But not Joseph. No one is said to have been more tender-hearted than he was. We read that Joseph wept often. But he never cried for himself. There’s no mention of tears when his brothers threw him in the pit. There’s no mention of tears when Potiphar’s wife accused him of rape, and he was convicted. There was no mention of tears when he was forgotten by fair-weather friends. Yet, the text tells us that he wept often. He wept when he recognized his brothers. He had to leave the room to contain himself. He wept when he saw his little brother Benjamin. He wept when he overheard his brothers’ regrets at sinning against him. He wept when he revealed himself to his brothers.

The last chapter of Genesis beings with Genesis 50:1, “Then Joseph fell on his father’s face and wept over him and kissed him. Joseph commanded his servants the physicians to embalm his father.” Hughes writes, “How beautiful Joseph was. The only tears recorded in his life were not for himself but for the plight of his brothers and now the loss of his father. Surely his brothers wept too, but Joseph set the heart-example.”¹

Embalming was associated with the religious cult of Osiris. According to Brayford mummification was performed “…Because devotees expected an afterlife, the physical preservation of the body was necessary.” But she then explains, “The writer of the Hebrew text, however, dissociated the act from its original religious significance. Instead, embalming was performed on Jacob and Joseph because both would be buried far away and many weeks or years after their deaths.”² The Priests of Osiris did the embalming in Egypt normally. But Joseph had his own physicians do it. Vos observes, “Physicians were equally capable of performing the task and perhaps they would have employed less of the pagan religious ritual than members of the embalmers’ guild would have.”³ Joseph kept his promise to bury his father in the cave at Machpelah where Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, and Leah were buried. Rachel, the mother of Joseph and the “beloved” one of Jacob was not buried in Machpelah. Although Jacob wrestled with God over the affairs in his life, he clung to God’s promises concerning the land. Being joined with his ancestors there assured a foothold on the land promised as an eternal possession. Ryan Cook, a professor at Moody, closed his devotion on this passage this way: “This scene is a dramatic reminder that God is keeping His promises. It also demonstrates that for all his faults, Jacob believed and acted on those promises, ensuring Israel’s future in the land.”

1 R. Kent Hughes, Genesis: Beginning and Blessing, Preaching the Word (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2004), 565.

2 Susan A. Brayford, Genesis: Commentary, ed. Stanley E. Porter, Richard S. Hess, and John Jarick, Septuagint Commentary Series (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2007), 448–449.

3 Howard F. Vos, Genesis, Everyman’s Bible Commentary (Chicago, IL: Moody Press, 1982), 194.